Winchester drive

The IBM 3340 of 1973 enclosed platters, arms and heads in a dust-tight assembly instead of having operators swap loose disk packs. The heads were made light enough to land directly on a lubricated surface at power-down rather than being parked mechanically, which removed a whole class of failures. The development name Winchester came from the 30 megabyte plus 30 megabyte configuration, which sounded like the .30-30 rifle cartridge.

The principles — sealed unit, air-borne heads, landing zone — became the industry standard, and in Europe "Winchester" was long used as a synonym for hard disk. Capacity has grown about a millionfold since without the basic design changing.